Painting the past: Holocaust survivor in museum exhibit

Tuesday

EXETER — Exeter resident Tom Weisshaus has been chosen as the first in a series of Holocaust survivors to be painted and documented as part of an upcoming show by renowned painter Felix de la Concha.

EXETER — Exeter resident Tom Weisshaus has been chosen as the first in a series of Holocaust survivors to be painted and documented as part of an upcoming show by renowned painter Felix de la Concha.

Weisshaus, an 80-year-old Budapest, Hungary, native, is known for speaking to school students around the area on his time spent in Hungary — from Oct. 15, 1944, to Jan. 8, 1945 — hiding from and dodging Nazi soldiers. Soon, Weisshaus' story will be recorded for many more to hear, as de la Concha plans to capture the stories of approximately a dozen Holocaust survivors through paintings and audio tapes to be showcased in a museum yet to be determined.

"I was telling a friend about the portrait and documentary being done and he said, 'What's next, are you going to do a sculpture with a horse?' I said, 'No, I'm just going to get a dalmation to sit at my feet," Weisshaus said with a coy smile.

This sense of humor is what Weisshaus credits as keeping him going during his years of struggle through the Holocaust and the years following when he dealt with many haunting memories.

"I'm kind of floored by the whole thing," Weisshaus said.

Weishauss came to New York City in 1947 after losing his mother, father, aunt and two cousins during the war. His family had placed the then-16-year-old Weisshaus into a safe house and were living in Budapest with false identification papers. His family was "ratted on" by the same person who gave them the papers, Weisshaus said.

When he found himself alone, Weisshaus said he faced a "numbness" but having to figure out what to do next pushed him through. "Somehow, miraculously, it kept me from falling apart psychologically," he said.

Weisshaus said "one miracle, one happenstance, followed another" and brought him to the United States. "Fate stepped in and the British closed the lanes over the Marseille to go to Israel," he said. "In 1946, Congress passed a law that an American immigrant under the age of 18 could get a passport."

Weisshaus arrived in New York on a ship filled with other children his age. "They divided the kids up in all different hotels in Manhattan," he said. "They told me to take 96th Street to 103rd Street and said there will be a hotel there you will stay at for the time being. I made my way, got to the hotel, looked up and saw the marquis that said 'Marseille.'"

Upon another chance of fate, Weisshaus, who played chess since the age of four, found a small room on the second floor of a house on 42nd and 7th avenues where established chess players played for money.

"In came this baby-faced kid who didn't speak English well and they thought here was an easy match," Weisshaus said. "I was wise to what they were trying to do and played along for a while. Eventually I made a living there for two years."

Chess, which Weisshaus said has a language of its own, kept him from looking back. "It doesn't allow you to think of your mother or father or the things you've missed," he said. "It only allows you to look at what's on the board. It saved my life. I was disconnected from everything but chess. I never allowed myself to think about the past."

Weisshaus read at the public library, worked at a department store during the day and took classes at night to earn his diploma.

When he went to Chicago, to "follow a girl," Weisshaus ended up meeting his wife. They married on June 25, 1952 and spent 55 years together before her death last year. With his wife's convincing, Weisshaus went on to earn a bachelor's degree from Northwestern University and a master's degree in English from Yale University.

He returned to New England in 2002 after teaching English at Tabor Academy in Massachusetts and at the University of Illinois in Chicago.

"By that time, I wasn't thinking how can I get back and feel bad about what happened when I was 16," Weisshaus said. "I can't say I missed it. I didn't want to tell people stories that would make me break down."

But every now and then, something comes up that does make Weisshaus go back. While talking to a friend from Budapest recently, Weisshaus said he told him a story "at this late date" that upset him. His friend was walking on the banks of the Danube River and saw shoes lined up next to each other at a memorial for the people who were lost in the river during the Holocaust.

"I said that's where my mother and the others could be," Weisshaus said wiping his eyes. "That could be their shoes. Sixty-four years later, I found out about something like that. I couldn't think about it."

To artist Felix de la Concha, Weisshaus' story is one of a kind. De la Concha worked on a similar project in Spain where he painted a variety of writers, directors, architects and philosophers while speaking to them about their art. He realized his talent for listening while painting and the intense testimonials he got from the subjects and thought how intriguing such a project would be with Holocaust survivors.

"The fact is, we are the last generation that can have this privilege to have contact with them, to see these people and their testimony in a way that they can give us things that we can get a little of in history books but not the human parts. Not hearing them, how they express themselves, their voice," he said.

Visitors to the future showcase will see de la Concha's paintings of the Holocaust survivors and will be able to listen to their stories on an audio recorder.

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